Our History

What started nearly 75 years ago as alfalfa fields has since blossomed into one of Arizona’s finest communities. McCormick Ranch was started as an active ranch in 1942 by Merle Cheney, and was sold to the McCormicks as the largest ranch located in the City of Scottsdale. Anne Stillman McCormick and her husband Fowler McCormick, grandson of John Rockefeller, continued to expand McCormick Ranch.

By 1949, Anne & Fowler brought 350 of their pure bred Black Angus & Ayrshire cattle over from Barrington Farms in Illinois. During that time, Anne purchased an Arabian Stallion, as well as two pure bred Mares. After importing these horses from around the globe, she began methodically breeding champion horses. Anne McCormick’s love for Arabian horses put Scottsdale on the map with the Annual Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show that she hosted yearly, on an 80 acre piece of her property called Paradise Park. Every February, the show is now hosted at Westworld of Scottsdale, and is the largest Arabian show in the world.

In 1967, the McCormicks donated 100 acres of land to the City of Scottsdale, 30 acres of which were specifically designated as McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park. When Kaiser-Aetna purchased McCormick Ranch in July of 1970, there were 7 square miles on the ranch, with about 600 acres utilized for farming grain products. This was the country’s largest single piece of property sold for a master-planned community within city limits.

McCormick Ranch Golf Club was designed by Desmond Muirhead and opened in 1972 and the courses and dining facilities have been open to the public ever since. Today McCormick Ranch has grown into a mature community of more than 3,100 acres containing 8,900 homes, condominiums and apartments, with close to 27,000 residents. In 1979 Edward Pincus purchased McCormick Ranch Golf Club, and to this day, it has remained a family-owned and operated business.